This web site is powered by a new generation of BBS software: Bulletron® Professional BBS Software. Bulletron® is a highly integrated system of communications software providing concurrent connections via:
Bulletron® provides a secure firewall to any computer system, tightly controlling access to files, disk directories, message areas, chat rooms, databases and external programs. Incoming files can be redirected to holding areas until they can be checked for viruses and other problems. Operator configurable SPAM filters automatically remove undesirable messages from newsgroup postings and e-mail. Private e-mail can be received, stored and retrieved without ever passing through the public Internet.
Subscriber logic in Bulletron® can process credit card charges on-line and bill for access to system resources by minutes used, by expiration date, or both at the same time. Automatic distribution of commercially licensed software can be facilitated by applying surcharges to specific files. Surcharges can also be applied to usage of third party programs executed interactively through a Bulletron® server.
Users accessing a single Bulletron® system can interact with each other in real time in spite of the fact that they are accessing the system via different protocols. That is, a chat room may have users connected via TELNET, direct dial modem, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and the Worldwide Web at the same time. One person may be uploading files via FTP while another is downloading the same files via ZMODEM-32. Articles posted to message areas by people using a TELNET client or web browser may be exchanged with Usenet news servers around the world via NNTP.
Each Bulletron® system contains over a dozen powerful search engines; each capable of locating a single word among thousands of gigabytes in less than a millisecond. A single system, running on an inexpensive Pentium processor can provide access to thousands of dial-up users and hundreds of thousands of web users simultaneously. Built in forms processing eliminates the need for CGI programming and the costly disk I/O overhead associated with CGI.
Every menu, web page and message in a Bulletron® system is operator configurable. Systems can be configured via the local console, through a dial-up modem or a web browser anywhere on the Worldwide Web without taking the system off-line.
Bulletron® systems provide create automatic daily backups of their accounts files, messages and other databases without going off-line. Redundancy built into the internal data structures allow the system to perform daily integrity checks and repair inconsistencies in their internal data without operator intervention. Interaction with battery backup systems permit orderly shutdown, broadcasting warning messages to any logged on users prior to shutting down.
The verison of Bulletron® that you are viewing here is 11.0. Through ten prior generations, Bulletron® has been in continuous development for more than twenty years. It had its beginnings as an OS/8 application running on a DEC PDP-8e processor. From there, it migrated through CP/M on an Imsai 8080, then to the Commodore 64. From 1988 through 1993, it ran under PC-DOS on IBM PC compatible systems, and then to IBM OS/2. Most recently, it has come full circle to become available as a VMS application for the DEC (Compaq) AlphaServer in addition to IBM OS/2.
What you see here is the beginnings of Version 11.0, which has been in development and testing since version 10.3 was completed in early 1998. Though there are enough of the pieces completed to begin live user testing, there are still quite a few pieces still being worked on. Particularly, in the web server component, many of the BBS components are not yet ready for live users. The BBS menu will gradually expand as the components are upgraded from verion 10 to version 11.
Further information about commercial availability and beta test opportunities will be posted as version 11 nears completion.
All graphic elements in these web pages were created using Povray 3.1 Persistence of Vision Ray Tracing. Photographic images were scanned using Compart Impos2 2.1, and edited using SPG Colorworks 2.0. Video clips were captured at 640 x 480 pixels, 30 FPS, using IBM Video-in under OS/2 Warp 4. The operating system is IBM Warp Server for e-Business, running on a 500 MHz AMD Athlon with 256 Mbytes RAM and IBM Deskstar 30 Gbyte ATA-66 hard drive.